A Chinese-Indonesian snack: honey or powdered sugar?

In Dutch the sweet, deep-fried snack pisang goreng is called gebakken banaan, which literally means fried banana. Many Chinese-Indonesian restaurants serve pisang goreng as an appetizer, and they are very popular.

In Chinese-Indonesian restaurants, the bananas are sliced in pieces and covered in batter. Then, they are deep-fried and often served with powdered sugar or honey. This adds to the sweetness of the snack, which, in contrast to Indonesia, is rarely sold by street vendors in the Netherlands. In that market the loempia is much more dominant.

Mingfang Wang, a former owner of a Chinese-Indonesian restaurant, posted a video on YouTube where we see that she uses bananas, flour, potato starch, baking powder and a pinch of salt to make the famous pisang goreng. She mixes all the ingredients for the batter and lets it rest for about two hours. After two hours, the bananas are sliced and covered with batter. The covered bananas are deep-fried till golden and served with powdered sugar.See Mingfang Wang’s video on Youtube

Mingfang Wang’s recipe is a classic take on the pisang goreng in the Netherlands. Recipes for this kind of pisang goreng are plentiful on the internet, and it is certain that the gebakken banaan will be a beloved dish in the Netherlands for a long time to come.